Accountability

The Supreme Court announced this week that it will begin using conflict-of-interest detection software to identify when justices should recuse themselves from cases. Parties filing before the Court will now be required to list stock ticker symbols in their filings to help the software flag potential conflicts. It sounds like progress. It isn’t—or at least, it isn’t nearly enough. The announcement is the latest example of the Court responding to legitimate ethics crises with the minimum possible action: a technical workaround that avoids confronting the actual problem. The actual problem is that two Supreme Court justices are still holding individual company stocks while deciding cases that affect American corporations, their shareholders, and the broader economy. ...

Two weeks after Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election, Chief Justice John Roberts summoned Supreme Court employees to a grand conference room and made them sign nondisclosure agreements threatening legal action if they revealed what happens behind the Court’s closed doors. This wasn’t a response to national security concerns. It was a response to the American public learning the truth about how the Court operates. According to a new report from The New York Times, the Supreme Court has converted what was once an informal expectation of confidentiality into formal legal contracts—complete with threats of litigation. The timing and circumstances reveal everything wrong with the Court’s approach to accountability. ...